ISQOLS WEBINAR:"Does it matter where it comes from? Happiness and air pollution sources"

ISQOLS WEBINAR

"Does it matter where it comes from?

Happiness and air pollution sources"

MONDAY

OCTOBER 5

7:30am Pacific Time

3:30pm/15:30 UK time (GMT+1

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FREE 

The adverse effects of air pollution on human health are well documented in the clinical, epidemiological and toxicological literatures. People in their everyday lives and industrial activity contribute to the creation of air pollution, but overall air pollution affects people regardless of how it is produced, unless the pollutant agent differs. However, does is affect people’s well-being differently depending on how it is produced? In this paper I study whether changes in air pollution from different sources have a heterogeneous impact on people's life satisfaction, and I analyse the incentives individuals face to abate emissions.

To do this I propose a model of household's choices of avoidance behaviours and use to analyse how differently-targeted policies affect households choices regarding air pollution. Later I perform an empirical study in a developing economy context. For the empirical work I use subjective well-being (SWB) measures to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for reductions of air pollution, procedure known as the Life Satisfaction Approach. I use data from the Chilean Pollutant Release and Transfer Register, which appoints air pollution to different sources, and merge it with individual-level socio-demographic information from the Chilean household survey. Preliminary results show that life satisfaction is negatively related to air pollution generated by transport and firms, but that the externalities they receive from generating air pollution in a household outweigh its negative health consequences.

Presented by:  Veronica Vienne